Random Lunacy

Almost done...

( March 15th: Dairy-Free Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies )

( March 16th: Visiting Cat )

( March 17th: Corned Beef )

( March 18th: Carnation Cow )

Edited because I realized the cookies weren't actually vegan, just dairy free.

Crossposted from my Livejournal.

You know, I'm tempted to just start posting these weekly, since I seem to be averaging about that anyway... but I figure with the way my brain works that would only end up with me posting them monthly!

( March 6th: Camouflage Kitty )

( March 7th: Donating Blood (not for the squeamish) )

( March 8th: Great Big Sea! )

( March 9th: Snoqualmie Valley Trail )

( March 10th: Tree Roots )

Crossposted from my Livejournal.

Whoa... major catch-up time. I'm afraid I ended up getting in waaaay too late every night while I was in Utah for the SF&F Symposium (there was filksinging every night) and never got around to posting anything and then, of course, I was behind and it seemed a bit daunting to get caught up!

Wednesday the 13th I flew down to Utah for Life, the Universe and Everything 31 (a number guaranteed to make me feel old, since I ran LTUE 9 when I was in college) and got to visit with my in-laws for the week! This time, I stayed in ( Rackham's old bedroom! )

The next day, I was really happy to see there didn't seem to be an inversion going in the valley, meaning everything was really quite clear (and I wouldn't have to worry about too much pollution). I took this photo from the front porch of tomte's mom's house ( looking out across the valley. )

On Friday the 15th, I met up with my mother-in-law and one of my sisters-in-law (the one who dared me into asking her brother out in the first place) for lunch at ( the Museum of Art at BYU. )

On Saturday, I snapped another shot while on my way to the last day of the Symposium, showing off the beautiful clear blue skies... this time with ( the Wasatch Mountain Range in the distance. )

On Sunday, we had a big family dinner for everyone who was in town to celebrate my mother-in-law's birthday! Since she'd requested German Chocolate Cake, I was asked to come up with a dessert for those of us whose allergies wouldn't let us eat any... and I ended up having to figure out what we could throw together with what we happened to have on hand (because I'd spent so much time at the Symposium, Sunday had sort of sneaked up on me), keeping in mind it couldn't have peanuts, tree nuts, milk, corn byproducts or strawberries.

( So I made faux peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. )

Today I had a bit of time... I'm still having a difficulty doing anything that involves putting pressure on my cut finger, so I figured I'd go on a longer hike to find a Geocache. In the end, I decided to grab my last unfound traditional cache in the Redmond Watershed Preserve (I suspect there may still be a puzzle cache or two with final stages there). Sorry I'm not more wordy. Trying to type without the middle finger of my left hand is almost as much of a pain as typing with it would be right now!

( Mirror on a pond. )

( On the trail, a bit further into the Preserve. )

On Monday, I headed out once again to the Snoqualmie Valley Trail for my daily walk and for my daily Geocache hunt, this time grabbing an easy multi-cache along the trail.

( Carving channels )

Crossposted from my Livejournal.

As I think I've mentioned here before, I'm a barefooter and have had a sort of hate/hate relationship with shoes for most of my life. I've got some good reasons for this (that are a bit too involved to go into right now), but early last year I tried on my first pair of Vibram FiveFingers and life has never been the same. I now own nine pairs of shoes. At the same time! Well, until winter hit, I only owned seven... the colder, wetter weather pushing me to try a more rugged pair of Vibrams that are fleece-lined and water resistant. And they work, mostly. They're rather tough to put on and I've found they're not very effective in wet snow, but when it's just cold or just wet, they work wonderfully! But, of course, this meant I still really needed something that would do a decent job of keeping my toes from getting frostbit in wet snow.

( Enter VivoBarefoot Trail Shoes! )

Crossposted from my Livejournal

Today's photo isn't terribly exciting and it doesn't even chronicle something that happened today (although that's when it was taken). We've had a pretty much ongoing project to remodel the house for the last eight years or so. It's been going well and we're entering the final stretch, with the last few projects left to do. And, of course, we're now seriously considering putting the house on the market when we're done.

( The living room with everything piled in the center. )

Crossposted from my Livejournal.

And now for Sunday's photo. A few weeks ago, John Kovalic (the artist behind the online comic Dork Tower) posted to Twitter and Facebook about his love for his SodaStream machine... and mentioned that he was using italian soda syrups with it. Well, I'd been sort of thinking of getting a SodaStream at one point, but had decided not to because all of the syrups that came with it were sweetened with a combination of sugar and sucralose (I absolutely cannot stand the taste of sucralose). So, I replied rather joyfully that I had no idea you could use other syrups and he replied back to me with some more info on how to do it. Yay! We headed out that night to pick one up and discovered that the company is now producing a line of "natural" sodas... sweetened with sugar! Double Yay!

( Making water go fizz. )

Looking around at the available flavors, aside from what I could make myself with Torani syrups (and I was pleased to discover that the passionfruit syrup makes a passable substitute for Passiona), I was very happy to see that they had a "natural" Country Time Lemonade!! Which means, of course, that I can now make my most favorite soda of all time at home: ( Lemon Squash!!! )

Crossposted from my Livejournal

Today started out surprisingly sunny, so I decided to head back out to the Snoqualmie Valley Trail for my daily walk and to find a Geocache. It ended up being pretty good timing, since the clouds started to roll in as I was walking back to my car. I did manage to snap a few good shots while I was out there, though...

( A bend in the river. )

And now, a follow-up to Monday's extra photo. Not taken in exactly the same spot as the last one, but very close (in fact, it occurs to me looking at it now that I should have gone down about another tenth of a mile and I would have been at pretty much the right place). It's amazing what a difference some blue skies can make!

( Sunny day on the trail. )

Crossposted from my Livejournal

On Tuesday, I went down to see about pushing a few loads of laundry through only to find that the towels I'd stuck in the dryer still weren't dry... and remembered that when I'd started them earlier, they'd already been sitting in the dryer and I'd wondered then if they'd already gone through one cycle in the dryer. So, by this point they'd gone through at least once, potentially twice and still weren't dry. I started them again and realized that the laundry room was quickly filling with the smell of dryer lint. Not good! In the end, rackham had to pull both the washer and dryer away from the wall to get at the venting for it... and discovered quite a buildup of lint in the "cage" over the vent outside the house. Oops.

( Rackham and the big glob of lint. )

Way down south of Seattle, there's a butcher shop called Proper British Bacon... specializing in British meats, along with some other items (British and not). It's a bit of a drive to get there, so I've never gone, but once a month or so, they do deliveries to Microsoft's main campus... and this time I actually got an order in for some things! So on Wednesday, I made my way to Redmond and met up with the folks from Proper British Bacon to pick up a haggis, a pound of proper British bacon and two frozen pork pies.

( Buying food from the back of a van in a parking garage. )

Crossposted from my Livejournal